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Animation Quick Look: Mother Up

Welcome to animation quick look. This installment is a little early as I am going out of town for a bit and don’t know if I’ll be able to watch anything and post while I’m gone. If that’s the case, look for the next post in the first week of July.

Anyways, Mother Up is the story of Rudi. A powerful, no-nonsense music executive who’s got it all. That is, until a scandal gets her fired from her profile job and black listed in the industry. Now she’s stuck in suburbia with her two kids, who she has no idea how to raise as some nanny whose name she can’t even remember did that before.

And if Mother Up was a fresh look from the female perspective of a formerly corporate mom trying suddenly trying to raise her kids, it might actually have some merit. Instead what we get is extremely tired tropes of city clashing with suburbs, and a mom who 5 episodes in still doesn’t give a shit about her kids and hasn’t even tried to be a mother.

It’d be one thing if she tried and failed, it would be kind of fresh because TV, animated or otherwise generally portrays the dads as the bumbling idiots. The key difference here is that Rudi is smart and capable, just a selfish heartless asshole and it’s not funny.

Mother Up is presented as a “female take” on shows like Family Guy but the difference is while those shows featuring bumbling idiots generally inept at parenting, they give a shit about their kids and genuinely try to be better parents. Even if the characters don’t really grow and change you continually see them trying their best. That’s what people identify with and find funny. Flawed characters that can royally fuck up sometimes but are genuinely trying. Mother Up’s protagonist isn’t just flawed, she’s an awful person who you have no reason to root for and hope her kids get taken away, The sooner the better.

Final Rating: 1/5-Moms who would actually name their kids “Apple” and “Dick”.